Author: johntodaro

Butter Knife Variations

Having not added a lens or camera to the arsenal in almost a decade, that changed yesterday with the arrival of a 25mm Panasonic Leica f1.4 lens. In the language of photography gear, that’s known as a fast normal.

I had a nice walk with it; first around the house and then in a local park. The extra stop beyond my old reliable just-shy-of-normal 20mm was a delight. So far, I’m enjoying the out of focus experience as much as the in.

Sadly, my Olympus Pen F is no longer serviced here, so a new camera may join the bag as well.

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Mojave Dusk

Joshua Tree National Park, 1994

This picture was taken on a trip to California in 1994. As was the case with the others, a square format image captured on film with a Hasselblad fixed-lens wide angle camera. What has pleased me most about these medium format resurrections is the smooth mid-range grayscale I’m finding when converting 30 year old color negatives; a result of that camera’s legendary optic.

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Needles District Landscape

Canyonlands National Park, 1993

The three districts of Canyonlands National Park protect over 330,000 acres of the Colorado Plateau; much of it designated as wilderness. I first visited this place with two companions in the summer of 1978. Memories of that remote backcountry and its extraordinary isolation have stayed with me all these years. This photo was from a later trip in ’93. Full frame image with film border to the left.

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Saguaros ii

Saguaro National Park, c 1991

This photo was taken the same day as the picture from my previous post; a warm March sunset six weeks before these cactuses typically bloom. In those days, I’d have to pick up a cooler and bags of ice to keep the film from getting ruined on hot days. And there was a second ritual of asking to have my film passed around the x-ray machine at the airport. When 120 film cameras became scarce in the 2000’s, the airport ordeal moved up to a higher level of complexity.

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Saguaros

Sagauro National Park c. 1991

The well-loved Saguaro cactus occupies a relatively small range in the Sonoran Desert (in southwest Arizona and also in Mexico along the east side of the Gulf of California). On this trip, we took a train from NYC to Albuquerque and drove into Arizona where this shot was taken. (I’m pretty sure this was also the trip when we saw a Gila Monster.) The image was captured with the Hasselblad “superwide” aka 903 SWC. Full-frame image with film border to the left.

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Cathedral Valley

Grand County UT c. 1994

This is the first of a group of scans I’m working on from unpublished film images taken around thirty years ago. This scene was just outside Capitol Reef National Park. I’ve included a file here to show the original border of the film, and on the left hand side you can make out the code notches from the Hasselblad film holder. The image was captured with a 903 SWC on 120 color negative film, and converted to black and white.

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Sanderlings in Sun

Homebound for a week, I’ll be posting some images from a few years ago that I’ve been wanting to revisit. I like thinking of image files (or negatives etc) as the score. You have the music and you can play it however the spirit moves you.

Napeague State Park, NY, 2019

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Night Walks – 2

Once I moved into a darker setting last night, I realized I might’ve been overstating my phone’s ability to render shadowy areas consistently. It becomes more difficult in low light to stitch a nocturne together without some artifacts. I remember this happening with my older phone as well. To some extent, this can be mitigated by finding a stable platform for the phone, but I’m trying to keep the gear bag empty. Last night’s “moonwalk” resulted in patchy sharpness so I decided to have some fun with treatment to see if there were some interesting directions to take the files. As some of you know, I collect inexpensive antique photographs, so those hundred year old patinas are itching to find a way into pictures I’m working on.

Phone used for photograph: Samsung Galaxy A35 5G

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Night Walks 1

November brings on short day length and so it’s a good time to see if we can make something interesting happen with darkness. With the set I posted in December ’22 in mind, I’m taking evening walks around town looking for photographs. Most current cell phones have a night mode feature which can, with a little practice, permit you to capture sharp, hand-held images. So, for this set, my camera stays home.

There’s an argument to shoot night photographs in monochrome, but I’m starting off in color to see what happens where nature meets artificial light. This first piece combines some of that light with the distortion of the phones ultra-wide angle.

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